]]>The Illinois Supreme Court says limiting damage amounts in medical malpractice cases violates the state's Constitution.
In an opinion filed Thursday, the court says such caps violate the principle of separation of powers. The court says the limits the Illinois General Assembly adopted in 2005 would infringe on the judicial branch's power.
Medical providers quickly warned that the ruling could hurt patients' access to doctors and hospitals because of increased costs.
Source: Illinois Supreme Court strikes down limits on damages in medical malpractice cases - Breaking news - bnd.com
If there’s a term you think I should add, or think I should expand on an existing term more, please either email me or comment here and I’ll do so.
]]>Again, hearty congratulations are in order to Joanne and the fine crew at the Center for Justice & Democracy. They’re one of the finest organizations fighting to protect the civil justice system from the millionaires & billionaires behind the tort “reform” movement.
]]>A prevailing plaintiff should be entitled to recover the full cost of her medical care, even if her private insurer paid a smaller, negotiated amount to cover all of her hospital and doctor bills, California's 4th District Court of Appeal panel held Monday.
The decision overturns a San Diego County Superior Court ruling that cut plaintiff Rebecca Howell's jury award for medical expenses from $189,978 to $59,691 on the grounds that she should only recover the amount her insurer, PacifiCare, paid to settle her bills, not the initial amount her medical providers charged. Howell suffered severe neck injuries when the driver of a Hamilton Meats & Provisions truck made an illegal U-turn and struck her car.
Under California's collateral source rule, "Howell, as a person who has invested insurance premiums to assure her medical care, should receive the benefits of her thrift; and Hamilton, as the party liable for Howell's injuries, should not garner the benefits of Howell's providence," Justice Gilbert Nares wrote for the unanimous three-justice panel.
Source: Law.com - Injured Can Recover Full Price of Care Even if Insurer Paid Smaller Sum, Calif. Court Holds
What’s going to be very interesting to watch is how healthcare reform affects this decision (if at all). Under California law, this decision doesn’t apply to anyone who has government-provided health insurance, but instead applies only to those with private insurance. Would an individual who takes “the public option” (if it’s offered) not be able to recover the full cost of medical care? Or if we’re all required to buy private insurance, will the rationale of this case go away?
]]>]]>“It is the court’s opinion that the negligence of the corps, in this instance by failing to maintain the MR-GO properly, was not policy, but insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness,” wrote Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. of Federal District Court.
…
The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that the Army Corps had not exercised “due care” in its maintenance of the channel, and that the maintenance that was done, like dredging, only made things worse. The corps’ actions, they said, brought salt water into the New Orleans area, killing off marshes; eroded the banks on which levees sat; and more than doubled the channel in width, giving water driven by hurricanes an unobstructed path to the city.
In his decision, Judge Duval largely agreed with this argument, at least as it pertained to St. Bernard and the Lower Ninth Ward. He was highly critical of the government, which had argued that the hurricane and its massive storm surge was simply more than the system had been designed to handle, and said the corps had manipulated facts.
Source: Ruling on Katrina Flooding Favors Homeowners - NYTimes.com
The “vanishing trial” is resulting in less courtroom experience for Hawaii’s litigators as parties on both sides of legal disputes seek faster and cheaper ways to resolve their differences.
Only 17 civil jury trials were completed in the state’s circuit courts in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008, according to the most recent data available from the Hawaii Judiciary.
Source: Hawaii civil jury trials becoming a vanishing breed - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):
And only eight in the federal court system.
Now, does it really sound like Hawaii has a tort crisis going on?
]]>LAKELAND | A federal judge Thursday cut $535,000 from the $800,000 GEICO was ordered to pay a former employee from Lakeland whom the company fired in August 2004 for refusing orders to dismiss an older worker.
U.S. District Court Judge James Moody ruled the insurance giant should pay $265,000 to Marija Stone, a former GEICO unit manager, her lawyer, Peter Helwig, said.
The ruling overturns a Sept. 21 federal jury's finding for Stone that included $100,000 in back pay, $200,000 in damages for emotional distress and $500,000 in punitive damages.
Moody ruled Stone was not entitled to punitive damages because the jury essentially doubled her award for back pay, Helwig said.
Source: Judge Slashes Lakeland Woman's GEICO Payout | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL
Judges can and do reduce jury verdicts they find to be excessive. Because judges have and exercise this power, you can’t argue for tort reform solely because you believe juries are too likely to inflate damage awards. Such an argument necessarily implicates judges for failing to reduce jury awards. This power is known as remittitur.
If you didn’t know, most judges don’t have the power to increase jury awards they find to be too low.
]]>Doctors have been flocking to the area and surrounding Westchester County since the 1970s, drawn in part by an upper-class clientele who demand top-notch medical care and have the means to pay for it. The county has one of the highest median household incomes in the nation (about $77,000 a year in 2007), and the figures soar above six digits in suburbs like Scarsdale and Chappaqua, which former President Bill Clinton calls home.
Nearly 3,000 miles away, scaring up a doctor in Bakersfield, situated in California's economically battered Central Valley, is a lot harder. In fact, White Plains has more than twice the number of doctors per capita as Bakersfield, where needy patients until recently had to take a 2-hour bus trip to Fresno to see a diabetes treatment specialist.
Two decades worth of U.S. healthcare data analyzed by Dartmouth Medical School at Reuters' request shows that such regional disparities are increasingly creating a nation of health-care haves and have nots.
The research also suggests that the chasm between places like White Plains and Bakersfield is likely to grow -- a point underscored by dozens of interviews with doctors and experts. That's because physicians, the data shows, gravitate toward affluent locales in the United States that already have all the medical help they need.
Source: SPECIAL REPORT - Are Doctors What Ails U.S. Healthcare? - NYTimes.com
Now, California has damage caps on medical malpractice caps, and New York does not. Ceteris Paribus, any city in California should have more doctors per capita than any city in New York. But we don’t live in a world of Ceteris Paribus. Ask a doctor if they’d rather practice in White Plains, where everyone has health insurance and the doctor risks being sued, or if they’d rather practice in the California central valley (or any other poor, uninsured area) and be completely immune to malpractice lawsuits. Most doctors are going to pick White Plains because money matters.
]]>]]>For the fraction of cases the department pursues, investigators almost always find multiple violations of state laws and regulations. But hospitals rarely face sanctions.
From 2005 through September 2009, the department conducted nearly 300 investigations based on adverse-event reports, with deficiencies found in all but a handful of cases. But during the same period, the department imposed cash fines against hospitals fewer than 25 times. Most of the fines ranged from $8,000 to $25,000, with two high-profile exceptions in 2005: a $250,000 penalty against Connecticut Children's Medical Center and a $100,000 fine against Hartford Hospital — both after multiple deaths or serious injuries.
Source: About 25% Of Reported Hospital Mishaps Are Investigated By Connecticut Health Officials -- Courant.com
WASHINGTON -- Some employers are pressuring workers not to report illnesses and injuries, just one problem that has led to widespread underreporting of workplace safety issues, according to congressional investigators.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors often didn't interview workers to verify what employers claim when keeping tabs on accident and illness rates, the Government Accountability Office report released Monday states.
The report said workplace injuries and illnesses went unreported because companies pressured employees to withhold the information, and about a third of health providers said they were pressured to withhold medical treatment so companies could avoid filing reports with OSHA.
Source: Report: Companies not reporting all injuries - washingtonpost.com
It’s the last half of the last sentence: “about a third of health providers said they were pressured to withhold medical treatment so companies could avoid filing reports with OSHA.”
What kind of a boss asks medical staff not to treat an injured worker so the boss won’t have to report the injury to OSHA?
]]>]]>Patients who lack health insurance are more likely to die from car accidents and other traumatic injuries than people who belong to a health plan -- even though emergency rooms are required to care for all comers regardless of ability to pay, according to a study published today.
An analysis of 687,091 patients who visited trauma centers nationwide from 2002 to 2006 found that the odds of dying from injuries were almost twice as high for the uninsured than for patients with private insurance, researchers reported in Archives of Surgery.
Source: Uninsured trauma patients are much more likely to die -- latimes.com
That statistic, and this video comes from the 98000 Reasons website.
98000reasons.org: Blake Fought from American Association for Justice on Vimeo.
]]>Nationwide, the number of payments physicians made for malpractice claims fell to 11,037 last year -- the lowest figure since the National Practitioner Data Bank began tracking data in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, the total $3.6 billion they paid was the second-lowest sum on record.
Source: Medical lawsuits radically declining » The Commercial Appeal
You know what question no one has answered? How many malpractice lawsuits should there be? “Reformers” argue tirelessly that there are too many, but they never tell us what the sweet spot is.
]]>Defensive medicine is just one of the supposed systemic ills that doctors, doctors' lobbies and doctors' insurers invoke when they shill for what they call malpractice reform. Proponents of reform say that defensive medicine, frivolous lawsuits and high premiums are behind the surge in healthcare expenses. They insist that malpractice costs are forcing doctors to close their doors and depriving patients of care. Recently, three past presidents of the American Medical Association coauthored an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that bundled all of these arguments into an attack on the public option. Their piece attempted to shift the blame for America's healthcare crisis away from private insurers and onto a supposed scourge of ambulance chasers. "The nation needs comprehensive medical malpractice reform," they wrote. "It is the surest and quickest way to slow down the rising cost of healthcare."
Their refrain is familiar to anybody following the healthcare reform debate. The only problem is that it's not true. There's nothing "sure or quick" about changing medical liability laws that will improve healthcare or its costs. Defensive medicine adds very little to healthcare's price tag, and rising malpractice premiums have had very little impact on access to care.
Let's look at the numbers. First, based on the current rhetoric, it's easy to assume we have an epidemic of malpractice suits in America. We don't.
Source: Healthcare Reform - Salon.com
And because I know some of you are too lazy to read the whole thing, here’s the conclusion:
]]>“Tort reformers neglect the fact that malpractice reform won't save one extra life. To make that difference, insurers, doctors and their lobbyists like the AMA need to find ways to improve patient safety. So for those who push tort reform as a panacea for a sick healthcare system, working to prevent injuries is a much more noble pursuit than writing up baseless arguments for the back pages of a newspaper.” (Emphasis added.)
Topeka — Seven years ago, Amy Miller, Eudora, went in for surgery for removal of her right ovary. Lawrence physician Dr. Carolyn Johnson removed Miller’s left ovary by mistake.
Miller sued, alleging medical malpractice. The dispute will land this week before the Kansas Supreme Court with arguments scheduled for Thursday.
The case has drawn some of the state’s biggest special interests, with doctors, insurers and businesses lined up against plaintiff’s attorneys, organized labor and other groups in a battle over whether it’s constitutional to place a legal limit on damages for pain and suffering.In 2006, a Douglas County jury returned a verdict for Miller for $759,680.
That award included $250,000 for noneconomic losses; $150,000 for future noneconomic losses; $84,680 for medical expenses; $100,000 for future medical expenses, and $175,000 for loss or impairment of services as a spouse. Noneconomic losses are awarded for pain, suffering, disability, mental anguish and physical disfigurement.
Source: Botched surgery case to test pain, suffering limits / LJWorld.com
If we accept the allegation that a negligent doctor removed a healthy ovary and left a woman unable to bear children, $575,000 doesn’t seem outrageously high to me. It’s not a negligible sum of money, but it’s low enough to show we can trust juries not to go overboard when making their awards.
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